Abstract
The majority of roads in developing countries especially in sub-Saharan Africa remain unpaved. To optimise their social impact, rural roads need to be complemented with convenient and affordable transport services that allow residents to reach markets and basic services. Motorcycle taxis or boda bodas, have risen to be the most dominant transport service in the rural areas of Uganda. Careful management of the vehicle operating costs (VOCs) is therefore important to sustain this service in the rural areas. This study estimates the changes in VOCs for motorcycle taxis with changes in the unpaved road condition. A 1·8% rise in operating costs is found when a road condition deteriorates from very good to good; and a 7·7% increase when road condition deteriorates from good to fair or poor.
Highlights
Transport provision in rural Uganda has focused on the provision of roads, mostly gravel and earth roads, with the aim of enabling access to markets, and other social services
The traditional assumption governing the development of rural roads is that investment on roads will spontaneously lead to the provision of transport services by the private sector as passenger and freight operators benefit from lowered vehicle operating costs (VOCs) and travel time savings
It is assumed that maintenance funding for unpaved gravel roads in rural areas aims to strike a balance between the cost of grading, re-gravelling or spot improvements and the benefits to be gained from reduced road user costs
Summary
Transport provision in rural Uganda has focused on the provision of roads, mostly gravel and earth roads, with the aim of enabling access to markets, and other social services. Due to low maintenance funding, many of the gravel roads in rural areas are not adequately maintained to a fair-to-good condition annually, leading to deterioration to poor or very poor states Even though models such as RED can estimate the VOC for motorcycles at different road conditions, Ellis and Hine (1998) note that most VOC data used to derive the model relationships is been collected from established operators who keep good records that are inevitably located in the major cities and who use the main network of primary and secondary roads.
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